I'm John Snoddy, I lead the
technology and innovation groups at Walt Disney Imagineering.
I'm here with Doug Fidelio and Leslie Evans from our research and development
groups, and we're about to open this
Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser.
And it features a huge project of yours, D3-09
conversational character that's on the ship.
Tell us about that. Who is she?
She is a logistics droid that you can actually call up
from your guest cabin. And on your droid link panel
you can press that button, and talk with her, and have a conversation
with her just like you would with honestly hopefully a friend.
We've prototyped characters like this for years.
We've done demos in this building,
but this has been really a first chance to get one of these tests
out into the world so our guests can actually have the chance to talk to D3-09.
I had the privilege of talking
with her tons over the last couple of years,
and it is kind of amazing that you can now, you know,
the technology is at the point where you really can have this
kind of conversational
experience.
Doug your team worked on the speech part of this quite a lot.
What kind of teams did it take to put something like this together?
Yes, it's a interesting thing.
Where here,
certainly there's technology that powers the experience,
but really the goals for that technology to disappear, right?
So the teams that we need to do that includes deep speech scientists,
folks that are deep technology
experts in natural language, understanding human robot interaction.
Folks that are actually team up with our artists our designers our writers
to make all of that technology disappear,
and create the amazing, engaging experience that becomes D3-09.
Leslie talk about just how a team like this is made up, because you would expect
we're talking about artificial intelligence and speech recognition and
emergent behavior and all of those things and you think of technology there,
but but it's bigger than that.
Yeah, I think our group's really at our best
when the art is pushing the technology,
and the technology in turn is also unlocking things for our artists.
So that's why when we build these teams, we are always having writers
and experience designers paired with our engineers from the start of a project
because a lot of times there are experiences
we want to bring to life and the technology doesn't exist to get it done.
So we have some of these artists and designers trying to figure out
how can I explain to the world this this new experience we could create?
And then our engineers
start partnering to build the tools and build the pieces to make that happen?
But I think equally as powerful is sometimes our engineers will unlock
a new thing that we could do.
A new way to do something becomes this tool chest
that now our artists and our designers can use to build things
that maybe they didn't even
they couldn't even dream of or didn't even think was possible.
Why don't we see a little bit of video and introduce her to you?
Hello and welcome aboard.
Hello. Hi.
Is now a good time to
discuss your journey?
Yes!
Wonderful!
My name is D3-09, the logistics droid of the Halcyon.
So tell me what brings you to our treasured ship?
We're on vacation.
If you want an unforgettable vacation
you are on the right starcruiser.
Oh!
How was your sleep cycle?
It was great.
Wonderful.
You need all your energy for your day at Black Spire Outpost.
Do you know the proper greeting to show respect to the locals?
No, not yet.
When greeting them, you should say bright suns!
Can you try it right?
Bright suns!
We are testing D3-09.
She is in every single cabin on the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser,
and we can't wait for you all to meet her.
This sounds like kind of a new world.
I mean, where
these characters that used to live on film suddenly jumped into our lives,
and are hanging around with us. What are the implications of that?
Our guests already have amazing relationships with our characters,
and this is really an opportunity to transform those relationships
in a way that are, you know, really fun, really engaging.
And sort of introducing conversation, and the ability for a character
to interact with you and sort of meet you wherever you are in a new story world.
And it really is transforming this.
It's kind of amazing how deeply people feel about our characters already.
I mean, people do connect in a really profound way,
and this really does seem fun to have them actually join with us in our lives.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's not just about the characters stories it’s about your story,
and I think that's what's going to be really fun about this.
It's not just going to be about D3-09.
She's here to celebrate you. To bring you into her world,
but also you're going to teach her things.
You're going to change this character.
Having that impact on a story, I think is going to be really fun,
and empowering for our guests.
Creating a platform like this is going to
let us start to really experiment with other things as well.
It's cool to have this team together the way we have.
It has this whole mix of all these different
types of thinkers,
and then now to have the platform and the technology that allows us now
to start to really experiment with, what do you do with these characters?
What do you do with them now that they work?
Yeah, and I think there's an incredible opportunity for folks that are interested
in this technology, you know, artificial intelligence and speech technologies.
This is the playground where you can transform these technologies
that are applied in so many other different ways
to something that's creating magical experiences for all of our guests,
and these humanlike connections with our characters.
In R&D I think part of the exciting part is that we're using technology,
but everything we do is from a lens of what new experience can this create?
We are building some really sophisticated tools, but at the end of the day
the experience is the thing that matters, and our team
always has that in their mind from the beginning.
That we never build technology for technology's sake.
It's always to enable an experience that wasn't possible before.
For me the thing that's fun about the way we work
is that thing of fitting your individual
excellence into this group of people's individual excellence,
and then you discover things that you can never do on your own.
And it's kind of the combinatorial effect of all those thinkers
there together make stuff that's really surprising often.
Yeah, I mean, that's our job here is to prototype, and explore, and eventually
test these concepts, and then eventually deploy them to the world.
So we're excited to get the first one out there,
and I think there's more on the way.
I know this has been a long, long project and a lot of work,
and we're all really proud of the results. And it's exciting to see this D3-09
character, you know, kind of step out into the world,
but what's even more exciting is what this means is that
we have this platform now, and I think it's going to be kind of
amazing to imagine a future in which you know you get to kind of hang around with these,
kind of crazy fantasy characters that are larger than life.
Don't forget to have fun.
Ok!
Safe journeys.
Okay, Bye.
Bye.